our
circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without
saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and
diligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this one
ought to be taught in the public schools--even in the newspapers. What
chance has the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert?
What chance have I against Mr. Per--against a lawyer? _Judicious_ lying
is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer
not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward, unscientific
lie is often as ineffectual as the truth.

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerable proverb:
Children and fools _always_ speak the truth. The deduction is plain
--adults and wise persons _never_ speak it. Parkman, the historian, says,
"The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity." In
another place in the same chapters he says, "The saying is old that
truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sick
conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles
and nuisances." It is strong language, but true. None of us could _live_
with an habitual truth-teller; but thank goodness none of us has to. An
habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does not
exist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who _think_ they
never lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the very
things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day;
every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning;
if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his
attitude, will convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--but
that is a platitude.

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretence of wanting to see each
other; and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad
voice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"
--not meaning that they found out anything important against the
fourteen--no, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they
were not at home--and their manner of saying it expressed their lively
satisfaction in that fact. Now their pretence of wanting to see the
fourteen--and the other two whom they had been less lucky with--was that
commonest and mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a
deflection from th